2009 Aftonbladet Israel controversy

Former headquarters of Aftonbladet, the largest Swedish tabloid. On 17 August 2009, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published an article reporting how Israel stole the organs of Palestinians in custody. Before eventually admitting to theft of organs, the Israeli government initially denied the allegations and called them anti-Semitic. The Swedish government refused to condemn the article, and upheld Aftonbladet's freedom of speech, leading to a rift between the Swedish and the Israeli governments.[1][2] Palestinian officials and families of the deceased called for an independent investigation. In December 2009, Israeli officials admitted that they had harvested the organs of Palestinians without their families' permission.[3] These Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli military, but Israeli officials emphasized they did not kill Palestinians in order to harvest their organs.[4] The article that sparked the controversy was written by Swedish freelance[2] photojournalist Donald Boström, with the title Våra söner plundras på sina organ ("Our sons are being plundered for their organs"). It presented allegations that in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, many young men from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by Israeli forces and their bodies returned to their families with organs missing. It was published by Aftonbladet, one of the largest daily newspapers in the Nordic countries. The Israeli government and several US representatives[5][6] claimed that the article was baseless and incendiary, alluding to the history of antisemitism and blood libels against Jews, and asked the Swedish government to denounce the article. The government refused, citing freedom of the press and the Swedish constitution. Swedish ambassador to Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier condemned the article as "shocking and appalling" and stated that freedom of the press carries responsibility, but the Swedish government distanced itself from her remarks.[7] The Swedish Newspaper Publishers' Association and Reporters Without Borders supported Sweden's refusal to condemn it.

The former warned of venturing onto a slope with government officials damning occurrences in Swedish media, which may curb warranted debate and restrain freedom of expression by self-censorship.[8] Italy made a stillborn attempt to defuse the diplomatic situation by a European resolution condemning antisemitism.[9] A survey among the cultural editors of the other major Swedish newspapers found that all would have refused the article.[10] The Palestinian National Authority announced that it would establish a commission to investigate the article's claims.[11][12] In December 2009, a 2000 interview with the chief pathologist at the L. Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine Yehuda Hiss was released in which he had admitted taking organs from the corpses of Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers without their families' permission. Israeli health officials confirmed Hiss's confession but stated that such incidents had ended in the 1990s and noted that Hiss had been removed from his post.[13][14][15] The Palestinian press said the report "appeared to confirm Palestinians' allegations that Israel returned their relatives' bodies with their chests sewn up, having harvested their organs".[16] Several news agencies claimed the Aftonbladet article accused Israel of killing Palestinians to harvest their organs,[17] although the author, the culture editor for Aftonbladet, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes denied that it had made that claim.[18] Article In August 2009, Aftonbladet ran an article by freelance writer Donald Boström in its culture section. The article opened by mentioning arrests related to a suspected money-laundering and organ-trafficking operation involving rabbis, politicians and civil servants in New Jersey and New York. Briefly introducing the problem of the illegal organ trade worldwide, Boström then related that he heard and saw things during his stay in the Palestinian territories in 1992, during the First Intifada.[19] A photograph accompanying the article depicted a cadaver with a line of stitches on the torso, identified as that of Bilal Ghanem, who was

19 when he was killed by IDF soldiers on 13 May 1992.[20] The Ghanem family was not interviewed for his article, but Boström described his impressions of Ghanem's burial, which he attended: Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear occasional laughter from the soldiers who, as they waited to go home, exchanged some jokes. As Bilal was put in the grave his chest was uncovered and suddenly it became clear to the few people present just what kind of abuse he had been exposed to. Bilal was not by far the first to be buried with a slit from his abdomen up to his chin and speculations on the intent started.[19] The next paragraph of the article quoted other Palestinian families and reads as follows: The affected Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza were sure of what happened to their sons. Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors, relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied. – Why would they otherwise keep the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing an autopsy when the cause of death is obvious, and in all cases against our will? Why are the bodies returned at night? And why with a military escort? And why is the area closed off during the funeral? And why is the electricity cut off? There were lots of upset questions from Nafes uncle.[19] Boström also wrote that unnamed UN staff members had told him that "organ theft definitely occurred" but that they had been "prevented from doing anything about it".[19] He also reported the response of the IDF spokesperson as being that the allegations of organ theft were lies and that all Palestinian victims are routinely subjected to autopsy. Boström noted that according to Palestinian statistics for 1992, Bilal Ghanem had been one of 133 Palestinians killed and one of 69 going through postmortem examination.

Boström concluded the article with his opinion: questions on what was happening remained unanswered and should be investigated.[19] Meanwhile, family members of Bilal Ghanem, the Palestinian at the centre of the article's allegations, stated that they had never told Boström that Ghanem's organs had been removed. However, even though they never spoke to Boström and lacked any proof to confirm the allegations, they thought that Bilal had been deprived of some organs.[20][21] In a follow-up editorial, Aftonbladet editor Jan Helin wrote that he approved the article for publication "because it raises a few questions" but acknowledged that the paper then had no evidence for its claims.[22] In August 2009, Boström said that he did not know whether the claims were true but that he wanted them investigated;[23] he made similar remarks at a November conference in Israel.[24] Aftonbladet published an update noting the recent conviction of Yehuda Hiss, Chief Pathologist at Israel's Abu Kabir Institute, and two of his colleagues for improperly taking body tissue from a dead Israeli soldier in 2001. The paper acknowledged that the event did not prove the truth of the original allegations.[25][26][27] Israeli reactions Government The claim in the article sparked an angry reaction by Israeli Foreign Ministry official Yigal Palmor, who associated the article with mediaeval and 19th-century blood libels.[28] On 23 August, the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, called for the Swedish government to condemn the article. An Israeli official quoted him as saying, "We're not asking the Swedish government for an apology, we're asking for their condemnation". The Israeli Finance Minister, Yuval Steinitz, said that a continued Swedish refusal to condemn the article might lead Israel to cancel a visit, scheduled for September, by the Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt. Steinitz told the Israel Army Radio, "Whoever doesn't distance himself from this kind of blood libel might not be a welcome guest in Israel at this time. Until the Swedish government understands differently, the state of Israel, the state of the Jews, cannot ignore antisemitic expressions and modern recycling of medieval antisemitism".

The Israeli Government Press Office, which accredits foreign journalists visiting the country, said that it was delaying its approval for an Aftonbladet correspondent and photographer who are seeking permission to enter the Gaza Strip by the maximum of 90 days allowed by regulations.[29] Netanyahu said that history was replete with blood libel against Jews that have led to murder: "These matters cannot be taken lightly. We are not asking from the Swedes anything that we did not ask of ourselves". He reminded his ministers that in February 2009, after a satirical skit on the Israeli Channel 10 that had poked fun at the Christian belief that Jesus walked on water and Mary was a virgin had angered the Vatican, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had expressed regret and sorrow. Netanyahu commented: "I don't recall that Olmert's condemnation damaged press freedom in Israel". The Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, told Army Radio, "What angers us is that the Swedish government didn't condemn it but hastened to reprimand the ambassador who did find it right to condemn" the story, which he compared to historic anti-Semitic tracts.[30] He accused Sweden of hypocrisy and called the affair "an odor of anti-Semitism".[31] Lieberman noted the Swedish condemnation of the Muhammed cartoons affair in 2005 as well as Sweden's shutdown of an Internet site in the country that had posted the caricatures and the Swedish foreign minister's letter of apology to the president of Yemen for doing so. He had criticized Sweden for its silence earlier that year when the city of Malmö decided not to allow spectators to a Davis Cup match between Sweden and Israel.[32] The Israeli Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said that he would act to prevent the paper's reporters from receiving work permits in Israel. The Welfare and Social Services Minister, Isaac Herzog, said that Israel should take legal steps against the paper. When asked why Israel did not investigate the article's claims, Israel's envoy to Sweden, Benny Dagan, said: "Why don't we investigate why the Mossad and the Jews were behind the bombing of the twin towers? Why won't we investigate why Jews are spreading AIDS in the Arab countries?